3D Printing With Sugar

Kyle and Liz von Hasseln, a California-based couple with a background in architecture and geometry, and a suspected sweet tooth, have found a way to use a 3D printer and granulated sugar to make intricate, edible geometrical decorations.

The couple set out to use a 3D printer to make a gift for their friendís birthday. After much trial and error, and long after their friendís birthday had passed, the couple found a formula that worked. They were able to print their friend's name in cursive and their friend loved the gift so much they thought other people would also love their sugar-based sculptures. This is how The Sugar Lab was born.

With their backgrounds in architecture, they quickly began to create much more intricate structures of complex geometries, testing the limits of their newly-invented granulated sugar building material. Their work includes complex lattices, curves that have created shapes that look like high-end architectural works, and 3D snowflakes.

Click on the photo below to see examples of work from The Sugar Lab.

(Source: The Sugar Lab)

The finished structures are delicate. Their integrity is easily compromised by rain and susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity. Interestingly, and somewhat intuitively, is that the more complex geometric designs, with many curves and intersecting planes, are the ones that yield stronger structures. Iím sure this concept of printing with sugar would be fun to use in learning about how to support architectural loads.

The Sugar Lab offers no pre-designed sculptures but instead asks customers to participate in the design process. Anyone interested can share a concept, or send in a picture or even a physical object they would like to have captured in a sugar sculpture. They suggest perhaps a ribbon from a wedding dress, your cityís skyline, or medieval design from a wrought iron gate. Sugar printings can be put on top of cakes, made into chandeliers or intricate sugar cubes, or used as standalone edible centerpieces.

Just be sure to protect them from rain or harsh changes in temperature and moisture, Liz von Hasseln warned me. The sculptures melt at around 150F, same as sugar, so donít leave them in the car for too long! "3D printing represents a paradigm shift for confections, transforming sugar into a dimensional, structural medium,Ē she told me.

Understandably, the company is keeping the information regarding its formula and process close to the vest. Eager to start 3D printing with sugar? See The Sugar Lab's website. Thatís a sweet idea.

Well, this is certainly not a 3D printing application I would have imagined! I am impressed by the intricacy of the designs. They remind me a bit of ice sculptures in terms of their sensitivity to the environment and their use of a delicate and changeable material, but of course not as cold and perhaps a bit more sticky. Interesting story to cover.

My first impression after reading only the headline, took me back to my 6th grade art project where I built a medieval castle using sugar cubes as the bricks. (Cool project, I got an A+). Keeping it around the house afterward was different story as ants quickly discovered it, and my mother banned it 'to the curb'.

Making the art projects as Edible to begin with – now there's a great innovation. Congratulations to the von Hasseln's!

This concept just screams for chocolate. I'm not even kidding. Perhaps it would require a lower temperature process, but the results could be beautiful for weddings or centerpieces at conferences. I'm betting on chocolate.

It's a neat idea and application, and I can understand the inventers wanting to keep it secret, but I'd still like to know how they do it. Given that they start with granulated sugar and end up with granules stuck together, it's some sort of sintering process. With sugar, that could involve either heat or a solvent (water). It seems like heat would carmelize the sugar, but perhaps not. In any case, that would be similar to the laser sintering used for 3D printing metal parts from powdered metal.

A solvent-based sintering process would be more interesting because I'm not aware of that being used in any 3D printing systems to date. Solvent sintering could open up a lot of new applications. It could provide an alternate method of making plastic parts, compared to the plastic wire extrusion that is common. I could also see it used to make intricate structures of water-soluble or other chemicals for use where a large surface area as well as mechanical strength is needed, such as in batteries and catalysts. A chemist may even be able to devise a process by which some chemical reaction takes place as the particles are adhered together with the solvent.

I must say I was disappointed with their website. It's very minimal, it doesn't work well, and the pictures, that are almost entirely close-ups, don't really show much.

Here in the Tampa Bay area I see quite frequently a brightly decorated van with the logo & description of EDIBLE DESSERTS. The van artwork shows various fruits re-formed into figures, etc. So, it would seem that although this 3-D printing is something new, this concept is not new. I'm sure that there are small businesses sprinkled throughout the land that offer this service also.

Rob, I am certain that I have seen a write-up about a chocolate printing process, within the last year, I think. So your idea is certainly valid. But I think that it dispensed a thin stream, not drops.

As for 3D printing with sugar, it would take a thin stream of granules and just enough IR to melt the outside of the grains, so the process control would need to be very tight. Not a real problem, except for finding the exact parameters. Adding any solvent would certainly lead to almost instant jamming because wet sugar is so very sticky. Really, the serious challenge would be in the feeding at a consistant rate. Of course it might just feed one grain at a time, but do it quite rapidly.

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